And that, boys and girls is how you do it.

I know!!! It’s only two minutes since she was a scrawny, skinned rabbit lookalike in an incubator with tubes coming out of every orifice and now she’s almost grown up. How did that happen so fast?

The school she’s attending is one of the new ‘Academies’, specialising in entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship as a school subject?

Hell, when I was at school we considered CDT to be forward thinking and very new age although at the time we didn’t know what new age meant – even though some of our teachers were most definitely it, floating round in clouds of long flowered skirts and smelling of patchouli oil. It was the seventies, after all. I think it was patchouli. Very unsettling, man.

Not all the teachers were hippies, some were more of your ‘old school’ type. Even more unsettling as they scared the hell out of me. All in all I spent most of my time at high school not really knowing how to behave around the cool teachers and being terrified of the strict ones, the end result of which was that I never went to school much. it’s a wonder I’m not totally illiterate with the amount of time I spent skiving in Corporation Park.

Anyway, I digress.

Batty, in complete contrast to me, has been loving her time at high school. Almost beating down the door in the morning in her haste to get in. Long may that continue, I thought.

It continued till today. Halfway through the morning she made a distressed phone call to her Mum. “I’ve got into trouble.” Batty never gets into trouble.

“I got into trouble for not turning up for a private singing lesson. I didn’t know about it, my teacher didn’t know about it either but you have to pay £18 because I didn’t turn up.”

Gembolina was suitably unimpressed as you can imagine. Unimpressed enough to phone the school to see what was going on. “What private singing lesson? We didn’t ask for private singing lessons.”

“Ah. Well. Yes.” came the response.

It seems that at the childrens induction day they filled in a form about themselves – a ‘getting to know you’ form. On this form it asked what, if any, instrument they would like to play. The kids in all innocence filled them in. Batty of course said she wanted to sing – being blessed with the voice of an angel as she is.

Next thing you know 200 parents have been hit with bills for private lessons for singing/guitar/piano/whatever lessons they know nothing about.

Now I know this school specialises in entrepreneurship but bloody hell! I wonder how many parents didn’t question it, just shrugged their shoulders and coughed up the money. Talk about maximising opportunities!

I can just image the headmaster in assembly tomorrow morning telling all the kids. ‘And that, boys and girls is entrepreneurship. Watch and learn, my beauties. Watch and learn.’